MULTIFACTORIAL COMPONENTS ANALYSIS OF THE RENEWABLE ENERGY SECTOR IN THE OECD COUNTRIES AND MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS

New technologies and new market realities determine the global energy industry to redesign their business models in all significant areas. We based our research on the components of renewable energy within the OECD countries and used thirteen indicators in order to find out both the relations and the impact of main sectorial indicators and the global indicators of the OECD countries to their economic and social development. The main goal of our research is to discover the main correlations between the renewable energies and the economic development of the OECD countries. We used databases of the OECD, Our World in Data, International Energy Agency (IEA) and International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), available for years 2017 and 2018. We apply Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and retain three principal components explaining 76.098% of the total variance. The main findings of the PCA application are; (1) factor 1 is dominated by the main renewable energy sources: traditional biofuels, hydropower, solar, wind and other renewables, as well as energy products, energy exports, energy capacity and energy generation; (2) factor 2 is dominated positively by energy imports and negatively by primary energy supply and GDP per capita; (3) factor 3 measures electricity generation. The results are addressed to the OECD member states, but also to other categories of states. Our results clearly show that if the OECD states are developing coherent renewable energy policies as part of an integrated smart energy system. The results show a direct link between investments in renewable energy and macroeconomic indicators of the considered states and main implications to the management.